Recently, various eco-friendly electric vehicles which may have reduced energy consumption and environmental pollution have been developed. An example of the eco-friendly electric vehicle may include a fuel cell vehicle and a hybrid vehicle.
The fuel cell vehicle refers to a vehicle which uses electricity generated by an electrochemical reaction of hydrogen and oxygen as an energy source. The hybrid vehicle refers to a vehicle which uses an internal combustion engine while it is driven at a high speed or driven on an uphill road and uses electricity as the energy source while it is driven at a low speed or stopped.
Generally, the vehicle of internal combustion engine is driven by driving power which is generated by an explosive reaction of fossil fuel with oxygen in the air within an engine to convert the chemical energy into mechanical energy. Meanwhile, the fuel cell vehicle is driven by electric energy which is generated by an electrochemical reaction of hydrogen supplied through a high pressure hydrogen tank or a reformer with oxygen in the air supplied through an air turbo compressor within a fuel cell stack.
In other words, the fuel cell system is an apparatus which directly converts energy of fuel into electrical energy. Further, the fuel cell system includes a pair of electrodes, i.e. an anode and a cathode, having an electrolyte disposed therebetween and obtains electricity and heat by an electrochemical reaction of ionized fuel gas.
A polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell may have a high current density, a low operation temperature, low corrosion and a reduced loss of electrolyte, and thus, the PEM fuel cell has been developed as a power source for military use or a space ship. Recently, the polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell may have a high output density and may be modularized due to a simple structure, and researches for applying the polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell as a power source for a vehicle have been actively conducted.
In the related art, a flux distribution stabilizer of the fuel cell has been reported in Korean Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 10-2006-0019998. For instance, the conventional flux distribution stabilizer of the fuel cell may be technology of controlling dynamic characteristics of the flux in the fuel cell stack to prevent stack performance from being reduced and assure stabilized cell performance.
Meanwhile, when a channel interval of a diffusion part is formed to be narrow, a fuel cell separator of the fuel cell stack improves distribution performance of reaction gas but manufacturing performance of the separator may be degraded. Further, when the channel interval of the diffusion part is formed to be wide, the fuel cell separator of the fuel cell stack may have the improved manufacturing performance but may cause an increase in a differential pressure and a reduction in water discharge performance due to an excessive permeation of a gas diffusion layer (GDL) into the channel, thereby reducing system efficiency.
The contents described as the related art have been provided only for assisting in the understanding for the background of the present invention and should not be considered as corresponding to the related art known to those skilled in the art.